


forget-me-not

by shadowcat500



Series: To Be Grey [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Budding Love, Dystopia, F/F, First Draft Chapter, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Human Experimentation, Implied/Referenced Torture, Injury, Injury again making that very clear, Kidnapping, Medical Procedures, Multi, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-consensual Medical Procedures, Other, Work On Hiatus Due To Author Burnout and Confusion, major character loses an eye, non-explicit just referenced, non-graphic but the noise is described, oh yeah! almost forgot, oof we about to get dark lads, use of personal experience of passing the fuck out to write a character doing so, written by a man who is still learning how to write romance bear with me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2020-10-18 16:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 16,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20642519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowcat500/pseuds/shadowcat500
Summary: The life and times of Agent Seeker/Chaser/Agent #0009.Also known as I need to give this guy a goddamnbreakbecause he deserves better than this holy shit





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay y'all this is the Big Fic I've been talking about (and also procrastinating on posting because i had to think of a summary etc) we're in for a ride

(_ 2/11/3139, 22:34 _)

Chaser and Crow had taken on this mission together. Crow’s brother was at home with her parents in Menoka, Chaser’s sister was with Crow’s parents as his own were out on a different mission. Both of their siblings were safe, Crow and Chaser had made sure of that.

Their mission was to sneak into the city, receive a USB full of dirt on some of the city elite from one of the Tree’s agents, and then to make it back to the camp without getting caught. Pretty simple, they and everyone else in the Tree had done it plenty of times before. The normal route back right now was through a tunnel in the city wall, through the woods, along the path, over the bridges, then the long haul to camp. Only a twelve-hour walk on a good night.

Unfortunately some jackass never thought to mention to Chaser that those woods housed a major Grey holding facility. A Grey holding facility where, it turns out, any Grey who wanted to escape would have to run through these woods, causing every Grey in the damn facility (well, at least Chaser hoped it was every Grey, any more than the amount he’d already seen was a terrifying thought) to launch a manhunt through said woods, royally fucking over anyone else attempting to escape through said woods.

Chaser ran his hands through his hair and sighed. Why tonight, of all nights? 

He was currently hiding behind a tree, desperately hoping no Grey caught his or Crow’s scent, clinging to the USB like his life depended on it. Crow was god-knows-where, most likely leading a few Greys away from the path out of the city, hopefully away from the cliff-face where the tunnel was. This information... at least the Tree could stand to lose it, right? He knew what he’d signed up for with the Tree. Death or worse was an always-looming threat when facing any city like New Bliss or Amytoxin or Neried, and Chaser had agreed to go in anyways. It was fine. He’d known. It was totally, absolutely, 100% fine. He squeezed the USB tighter and listened harder. 

.

.

.

What was that?!

A crunch of leaves. The loudest a Grey’s footsteps ever got oh god oh god-

“Found him.”

Chaser felt a prick in his neck and knew nothing more.

***

“009.” 

Chaser stirred, the chain of letters and numbers rousing him, if only slightly.

“Agent 009, wake up.” The voice lacked any kind of gender to the pitch, but sounded around his age, a bit older perhaps.

“Whus-wrong?”

“Agent 0009R23GRE5SKC9, wake up or we will make you.”

“Name’s—god it’s too early for this—Chaser, motherfucker.”

“Fine. Chaser, wake the hell up.”

Chaser finally opened his eyes and realised he was not, in fact, in his bed back at the Oak, despite his (unusually exhausted, what the hell happened last night?) brain’s best attempts to convince him of such. The room was bright white, hospital sanitary white, (something about a mission gone wrong? his head hurt a lot and felt like it was full of fiberfluff) a colour that was normally partnered with a voice greeting him with something along the lines of “Congratulations, idiot: you got injured badly enough for us to drag you to a hospital.” Speaking of said annoying (missing) voice, where was she?

“Crow?”

“Grey Initiative, moron. You got captured.”

A dropped a rock into the pit of his stomach. 

Shit.

He’d been captured, by Greys, in the age range that Greys were made from, and woke up in a hospital. He knew what the Intiative did to anyone they captured alive. If the plan wasn’t to make him a Grey, he’d give Crow back her eighty credits he “borrowed” that one time (he wouldn’t she’d probably borrowed enough from him to make it up three times over). Speaking of Crow, where was she? Hopefully they hadn’t gotten to her yet. Hopefully.

Chaser swung his legs over the side of the bed, pushing himself up as he did so (have to find Crow she’ll know what to do she always knows), and came face to face with a person (Grey?) with moon-white hair and a face far too young for it. Their cloudy-grey eyes bore into his own with cold amusement that didn’t fit right on their face, like badly-sized contact lenses. “Don’t bother. Your legs won’t carry you far even if you could get me down, they already put the numbing agent in.”

“The what?”

“C’mon, you’re a Blank aren’t you? You know where you are.”

“Humour me.”

“Holding Area Negative One, your surgery’s going ahead in an hour.”

Fuck. Not good at all. Time to take inventory on potential other prisoners. “Where’s Crow?”

“Who?”

“Tall woman, curly black hair, black eyes, looks like she hasn’t seen the sun in a month.”

“Hm, think they captured one like that alongside you.”

Shit. Half his escape plans for this situation (that he’d gone over with Crow, he didn’t have any others he was going to be a medic not a recon agent) wouldn’t work if he had to rescue Crow as well. The best one was ‘gather information, then escape with Crow’. “Ok. So what are you here for?”

“Ah, that.” The white-haired Grey sat down on his bed next to him (it was the side closest to the door, already covering his escape routes more thoroughly now that he was waking up) and continued “I’m here to tell you that the surgery will go ahead, no matter what you do, so don’t bother trying to escape. Also, if you try to escape, we’ll hurt the people you care about.”

“You don’t have any of my family.” At least hopefully they didn’t. Maresu, mum, dad and granddad should all be at home by now, waiting for news about him and Crow to get back to the camp. 

“Are you sure? That ‘Crow’ girl seems awfully nearby.” 

Shit! Crow! (why the hell did he keep forgetting her?)They had Crow and knew damn well she would make an effective stand-in god _damn_ it-

“So obey or we’ll hurt her.” 

Christ on a fucking bicycle of shit. No way out, Crow held hostage, himself on the verge of being forced to become a soldier of one of the Tree’s greatest threats. A deal without a second choice and a proxy giving it to him. Sounds like a movie he watched years ago, fucking Twenty-Two Nights or something. Dammit. “Fine. I’ll do it.”

***

He let them inject a syringe into his arm without fuss and blacked out not long after, the blink-and-it’s-two-days-later kind of blackout that he hated the most. A _wonderful_ start, and the already-hated face of Snowflake (white-haired bastard) greeting him the second he opened his eyes just made it worse.

“Morning, sleeping beauty. You’re a Grey now, get your ass up.” They barely waited ten seconds after his eyes opened to seize his wrist and drag him bodily out of the bed, swinging his arm over their shoulders and their arm round his waist to catch him when he inevitably fell not two seconds after standing up. His visions staticked over and the only sensory feedback he got for a few minutes was the feeling of his feet dragging over tile and the sound of footsteps that beat into his brain. 

They arrived at a crowd with a roar of noise that drilled into Chaser’s brain like a jackhammer, causing him to flinch backwards in Snowflake’s arms. He distantly heard them ask what was up, and at his lack of response they dragged him over to somewhere and Snowflake said miss I don’t know what’s wrong with him and another voice said I’ll take him and then someone else grabbed his arms and

***

He woke up in a hospital bed. Again. He was getting sick of this already. 

“Miss, uh, doctor, he’s waking up again.”

“009?” A hand shook his shoulder and Chaser did his best to bat it away, though the most he did was lift his arm and kind of move his hand in the other hand’s direction. He thinks he did at least, direction was a little iffy right now and he didn’t need anyone to tell him for him to know he was probably on at least one kind of painkiller. 

“C’mon 009, don’t do this to me... up and at em!”

“Ff-uck... off.”

There was a pause and then Snowflake’s voice. “Uhhh... okay?”

Chaser went back to sleep.

***

“Healing factor—malfunction – system’s gone haywire—Christ—never seen—”

***

Chaser woke up feeling much better than he did the last two times, feeling much more like he was physically able to stay up if he got out of bed. Good. 

“Back with the land of the living again, 009?” He looked up to see a Grey with ruler straight grey (ha) hair wearing a plastic smile staring in his direction. He shifted uncomfortably. “You gave us quite the scare there.”

“Sorry.”

The Grey’s eyes widened and the smile became real. “Thank god, you’re actually conscious!” At Chaser’s face she continued. “You’ve been on-and-off consciousness for days, and this is the first time you’ve actually spoken.”

That probably wasn’t good. “What happened?”

“We think you accidentally got a much better healing factor than your predecessors and your body hadn’t adjusted enough before we got you up. Our fault, we miscalculated.”

Fair. (This was the Initiative? Seemed so much more... _friendly_ that he’d anticipated. So much like the doctors in the medical area back at the Tree.) “So what now?”

“Now you rest and wait for everything to settle in. You missed partner assignment but you weren’t assigned a partner, I’ll tell you what that means a bit later, and... I’ll talk to you about the other thing later. Long story short you never needed to be at partner assignment. Sorry.”

Chaser nodded (why was this lady trying to seem like his friend? She wasn’t Crow, and no one else could help him right now), turned onto his side and went back to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back

It was three days before he was allowed to get out of bed, and another two before he was allowed to leave the room on his own. He only knew from his shiny new internal clock that any time had passed whatsoever: he hadn’t been allowed a clock, his smartscreen or a calendar. Well, that and they had an artificial day-night cycle going on here. The lights dimmed at certain times and the amount of Greys coming through that he could hear decreased, but that was all that seemed to change.  
Anyway, today was day seven since he woke up properly, and the grey-haired doctor (whose name he’d since learned was Dr Oriana) was currently walking him to the cafeteria. 

“So you know what’s happening now, right?”

“Yep. I haven’t been assigned a partner which means they want to be able to move me easily and without reassigning partners, and for some reason they haven’t assigned me a room so I’ll be staying in a spare one-person apartment in the medical facility normally used for long-term patients that the Initiative doesn’t want to terminate.”

“Yep, that’s basically it. Now go eat, I have patients to attend to.” She shoved him towards the door and walked away.

Great. Just drop him into a completely unfamiliar social environment and leave him there, why don’t you. Thanks a lot. He sighed and pushed the door open into the bustling dinner hall. No one turned his way when he joined the queue for food, even though he stood out in the hospital uniform: loose grey shirt, loose black trousers and regulation dark grey slip-ons. 

Maybe he’d see Crow soon, and things would make sense again.

***

Two weeks without a sign of Crow. The doctor had been evasive whenever he’d tried to bring her up, behaviour almost suspiciously reminiscent of his sister when she messed up and didn’t want him to know (he misses her already, he hopes he can find a way out soon) so it was obvious that she either knew what happened and knew he wouldn’t like it at all, or she didn’t know at all and didn’t want him to know she didn’t. Either way, it wasn’t good. Most likely it would impact his attempts to get out of here with Crow. 

He pushed open the door to the corridor with a sigh. Hopefully in another few-

“Chaser!” 

“Crow?!” Crow! She’d know what to do! They could get out, they could go _home_-

Crow tackle-hugged him at top speed, knocking him straight off his feet. “I missed you!”

“Damn right you did!” 

***

Ok, this was... a tight hug. “Crow, you’re crushing my ribs.”

“Ah, sorry.” She finally released him from the slowly-tightening embrace she’d had him in for the past couple minutes. “Where were you?”

“Here. Where were you?”

“Oh this guy came to the cell I was in and explained everything.” Cell? That wasn’t good. And what did ‘explained everything’ mean?

“What?”

“Yeah, they just want to help New Bliss!”

What.

The statement was so _not_ Crow that Chaser knew exactly what the fuck was up in a heartbeat and shoved her away in shock. “Have you forgotten everything they told us at the camp?! Kidnapping, hostage-taking, torture, medical abuse, human experimentation, waging war, terrorising the populace, among dozens of other things, all unimportant?!”

Ok, his tone might have been a bit strong (he’s terrified. He’s fucking terrified, the failsafe has broken because _Crow isn’t supposed to have gone down_ it was just a fucking _USB stick_-) but that doesn’t justify how suddenly Crow went on the defensive, “Well, people can lie, and even if they were telling the truth, to make an omelette you have to break a few eggs!”

“_Break a few eggs_?! Crow, are you even listening to yourself? You’re saying all this shit out of nowhere, and I doubt it’s you talking. Who told you this?!” He’d heard of this. He knew what they’d done now and it was sticking in his brain like it was coated in adhesive.

“Some guy up top here. Don’t remember what he said really, but it was important and apparently enough to get me to reconsider my view on the Initiative in a few hours. Facts do that, Chase.” Memory wiping, perhaps? He didn’t put it past the Initiative to have something like that in reserve.

“A few hours?! Then where the hell were you for the last two weeks?!”

“Two weeks?” Memory wiping, without a doubt.

“Yes, two weeks! We’ve been here for a full fortnight in case you hadn’t noticed!” He was yelling now. He always did when he was scared. (It doesn’t make sense. Nothing about right now does what is Crow _doing_)

“We’ve been here for a day at most, Chase!” Oh god. They really did it.

“I know we’ve been here for weeks because I had a fucking body clock and could _count_ unlike some people!”

Crow went silent. Then she turned on her heel and said “I’m not continuing this conversation. You can join or go, but I’m staying.” She walked away.

And Chaser felt suddenly, terrifyingly alone.

***

He went straight to Dr Oriana afterwards. She’d flinched when he threw the doors open, but not in surprise: she did so in the way of someone anticipating a hit. (She _knew._)

“What the fuck did you do to Crow?!” He was pretty sure he knew the answer, but he wanted confirmation all the same.

“I-we- Brainwashing. They brainwashed her. The old fashioned way, as much as they could with such a limited timespan.”

Old-fashioned way?

His thoughts must have shown on his face because she continues. “Locked her in a small dark room, minimal food and water, took her out every so often for psychological torture, re-education sessions and propaganda. The third one they’ve ever taken all that effort for. You must be pretty important.”

“I- me? Why am I important?”

Her face brightened and she relaxed slightly. He must have been something she was more comfortable speaking about. “They made you a Solo, so they want to keep you separate so you can be removed easily without the fuss of partner or room reassignment. They wouldn’t have brainwashed you because they want to keep you as whole as possible, instead, they brainwashed someone you cared about so you’d have to stay. It’s a brilliant plan really.” She pauses, studies him for a second and says “What’s that face for? You should be grateful they only went this far! They could have sent her to, eugh, _Dr Threnody_.”

The only response Chaser gave her was the sound of the door slamming behind him as he sprinted back to his room.

***

He spent the rest of the day locked in his room. He turned away from the camera in the corner of the ceiling, covered his ears against the sound of Dr Oriana’s voice and her knocks on the door. He only responded to anything outside around a day later when an automated voice came over the loudspeakers he didn’t know the room had:

OPERATIVE 009. YOUR CARETAKER, LUCY ORIANA, IS DEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN REASSIGNED TO HOLDING AREA SEVEN ALONGSIDE OPERATIVE 010. COLLECT YOUR THINGS AND BE STANDING OUTSIDE YOUR DOOR AT PRECISELY TEN MINUTES. TARDINESS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED. MESSAGE END.

Well then. That’s that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Familiar faces next week!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two-year timeskip and some familiar faces!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm tired and sad

“Operative 009R23GRE5SKC9, you have been assigned introduction duty.”

“What?” Two years since his own introduction to the Initiative, one-and-a-half before realising the most he could do for Crow was to stay near her, and Chaser had forgotten what introduction duty even was.

“You’ll be in charge of making sure that a new recruit agrees to join the Initiative of their own accord. If you fail, they will be given 15-75, and you will face Consequences.”

“With a capital c?”

“Yes, a capital c, 009.”

Alright. Probably not real Consequences, use of 15-75 would be a failure and Consequences were given for betraying the Initiative. But still, he couldn’t take the chance that it wouldn’t be real, no matter how much more likely it was. Either successfully extort someone around his age or a couple years older, threatening them with potential harm to their loved ones or consign them to a fate eternally chained to the Initiative by chemical manacles. No escape for them, or him, ever. There was a reason introduction duty had to be assigned: no sane soul in the Initiative would willingly take it.

***

The Grey was average height, slim, with long curly dark-green hair spilling over her shoulders and coal-grey eyes that stared blankly (her eyes said thoughtfully) at the ceiling. Perhaps she was considering her situation. Maybe it would be easier to talk her through it when she already knew what had happened.

Chaser cleared his throat. “Amazonite, #0136G64G56SKC15.”

The Grey jumped and looked at him. “Uh, yes?”

Good. Functioning and stable, mentally online enough to respond properly, both pupils approximately the same size. He scribbled out some notes on her condition onto his clipboard and without thinking, told her to follow him and walked off.

It took the sound of her feet hitting the floor and beginning to run after him for him to remember the stability issues most Greys had with standing up once they woke up for the first time, and he whipped back around to catch her before she could fall. “Hey!”

He turned the Grey’s face to his, and noticed that they seemed kind of zoned out, pupils dilated and staring dazedly at his face. He waved his free hand (he’d dropped his clipboard to catch her) in her face. “136?” She didn’t respond, so he tried again, this time clicking his fingers in front of her face. “136, wake up!” She still didn’t respond, so he clicked his fingers in front of her face, a little closer this time, breaking protocol and using her actual name. “Amazonite? Morgan!” 

The Grey (he should call her Morgan, really) jumped back and blurted an apology. She was a medical student, wasn’t she? So she’d respond to a decent explanation. “I said you shouldn’t be running so soon after the surgery. You’ll overbalance. You’re taller, so your centre of balance is off from what you’re used to.” 

“Oh. Sorry?” She sounded confused, dammit.

Well, no use crying over spilled milk (or almost-falls caused by forgetful doctors). “Don’t be. You did remarkably well, considering. He turned away, reconsidered, and turned back to offer a hand to her. “Hold my hand or you’ll fall.”

***

He guided her to the office (yeah, they’d started using a group of offices for the sake of a walk to test if the Grey would pass out: it made Chaser smile to think he’d caused such a fuss to the higher-ups) and gave her the talk about being a Grey, and definitely did not almost have a breakdown when initially she didn’t seem responsive to the threats the Initiative used. She’d agreed, and then he’d taken her to room assignment where she’d walked off to go find her partner, a girl called Hama who Morgan seemed to already have a reciprocated crush on. Ah, young love.

Speaking of Hama, the person who’d been assigned her introduction was carefully sidling over to him, doing their absolute best to make sure their steadily-decreasing distance to Chaser looked like a complete coincidence. Chaser sighed and turned to them. “What the hell do you want?” Emotional attachment did no favours for anyone here, and he didn’t need any more than he already had.

The other Grey jumped, laughed (nervously) and ruffled their hair. “Well, we’ve been assigned an apartment together. I thought it would be a good idea to do introductions.” They stuck out their hand for Chaser to shake. “I’m Janus, and I use xe/xim pronouns. I’m training as a combat agent.”

Chaser haltingly shook xis hand. “I’m Chaser. I use he/him. I work in the medical facility. Apprentice field medic.”

“Nice! We’ve been assigned 1609, want to go?”

“I have a medical assignment at four.”

“That’s in three hours! We have plenty of time!”

Chaser didn’t comment on and refused to think about xis uncanny grasp of the time. “Fine.”

***

Janus led him along with almost puppy-like excitement. It was...sweet. Crow wasn’t who she used to be, what used to be a haphazard fluctuation between hyperactive overexcitement, terrifying focus and surprisingly effective flirting had become.. something else. She was the same as far as she knew, but Chaser could see something missing in her eyes. 

Janus felt right. Xis grip around his wrist felt right. The moment he stepped into their shared rooms, Chaser felt his shoulders untense a little for the first time since he realised what had happened to Crow.

***

“This is your handler, kids, say hello.” Chaser took a step back from the doorway to let Crow pass, and she did so with her head held high and a swagger in her step. A perfect entrance, showing her authority, if only someone hadn’t chosen that moment to be snarky. 

“I swear everyone who calls themselves Crow looks the same.”

Luckily for the new Grey, Crow (was it even really Crow anymore?) took it well: “Snarky. Good trait, means they didn’t fuck up your brain too bad, but don’t use it on superiors. Not everyone is lenient.” Crow then paused, cocked her head slightly and asked. “How many Crows do you know?”  
Chaser managed to identify the Grey in question when they spoke this time: dark-ish skin, a shade or two lighter than Crow’s should have been, dark brown hair in a spiky pixie cut and distinctive velvet-blue eyes. “Like eight, and you could all be siblings. I know they’re lucky birds and all with a cool aesthetic, but why the vampire look? I’ve never understood it.”

“It looks cool. Anyways,” Crow turned to the rest of the room. “my name is Crow, and I am your handler. That means I’m the one that handles missions, team-building exercises and supposedly am the responsible adult. Come to me with questions. Speaking of, any questions? None? Good.” Crow hadn’t paused for answers. “Now, we’ll be doing roll call so everyone hears everyone’s name at least once. Now, starting with Avia Swokker. Go!”

A pale girl with lilac hair in a ponytail stood up. “Avia Swokker. Bl-”

“Nope.” Crow interrupted.

“What did I do, miss- uh, sir..?”

“Your colour, in the few legal documents that remain about you, is now Grey. Say, uh, your favourite animal instead. And call me Crow.”

Avia nodded. “I’m Avia Swokker. My favourite animal is penguins, because they always looked so cute in the old photos!”

Crow nodded, as did Chaser (though no one else in the room noticed him doing so.) “Next!”

***

“So, who were you assigned to on introduction duty?” Three weeks had passed since he and Janus were assigned a room together, and they had finally gotten some actual furniture. The Initiative did provide basic stuff, but it was cheap and plain and basically everybody replaced it as soon as they had enough credits. Chaser and Janus were carrying the new furniture to their assigned rooms, Janus carrying a few flat-packed chairs and Chaser a table, and Chaser was doing his level best to make small talk because Janus’ humming was getting annoying (and not because xis humming was cute and Chaser could feel himself getting more attached by the second).

“Uhhh, I think her name was Hana? Hama? I don’t know, but I think she was partnered with your one, with the green hair.”

“Morgan?”

“Probably.” Janus turned to face him with a grin, walking backwards to do so. “Either way, they looked a little more interested in each other than serving the Initiative. They both looked like tomatoes.”

“I didn’t see.”

“Ah, you really missed something the- woah!” Janus proceeded to attempt to turn back around but only succeeded in tripping, dropping everything xe was carrying and almost slamming xis face directly into the vinyl flooring, if it wasn’t for Chaser shooting out a hand to grab xis wrist.  
There was a pause, then Chaser remembered the second half of catching somebody falling and pulled xim back up onto xis feet.

“Ah, um, thanks. For that. Owe you one.” 

Chaser merely nodded in response and put his other arm back onto the table, steadying it back into the slightly-less-precarious-but-still-very-much-so position it was in the second beforehand. This was fine. He was fine. He didn’t know he’d just missed Janus’ flushed face before xe turned back to xis pile of four dropped flat-pack chairs. 

***

Three weeks after their first introduction, a “friendship” had developed between Hama and Morgan. Well, “friendship” was one way of putting it. The best way of putting it was a positive relationship with a lot of “I may have a massive crush on you and have no idea how to mention it to you” tension mixed in, forged through many awkward training and team-building exercises. Chaser had only been sitting with them for five minutes and he could already feel it in the air thick enough to cut through with a blunt spoon. 

The awkward giggling had been happening every twenty seconds for _ three minutes straight _.

Chaser rapidly came to the conclusion of sending the two out on a solo mission as soon as possible, at the very least to clear the air before it suffocated everyone in HA7. The amount of paperwork he would have to fill out in that metaphorical scenario was giving him a headache at the mere idea. WIth luck he could get Crow to get them out before he needed a painkiller.

***

Chaser did not intend to be sent on the mission as well. It was decidedly no longer a solo mission. More a trio mission. Not having an official partner sucked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two-chapter update next week bc i feel like chapter five is too short
> 
> Halfway through uploading this i got distracted by fuze elbow drop memes while blasting foreigner's god i'm having both a great day and a terrible day
> 
> Shoutout to the two people who seem to like this y'all are the real ones here fuck yeah


	4. Chapter 4

The higher-ups put Hama on guard duty, despite her complaints (which Chaser privately shared, considering his plan had been ruined even more so than it had been already) and put himself and Morgan on field duty. In short, they were to go in, leaving Hama outside, and clear out the cell of Yellows and Blanks using the building as a base. A basic mission with plenty of room for “disaster” to strike and Morgan or Hama to have to rescue the other, potentially dealing with their blatant feelings for each other. 

A disaster that wasn’t going to happen because Chaser was on duty now and by god he would deal with this because a bad report was another potential Consequence for Crow, and that wasn’t something he could allow to happen.

***

Chaser had re-gone through the basics of quick takedowns with Morgan once they were inside the building and steadily took down several rooms of people efficiently and while not completely silently, they did it quietly. They hadn’t found anything particularly suspicious, like Sunshine (the drug-smuggling rumours were true, though not on the scale reported), hard drives or mounted turrets yet, but things could always happen. No reports had come through from Hama, but Chaser decided to let that slide once he realised her earpiece was broken. Equipment failure was hardly the fault of the user. He’d have to bring that up with the engineering department once he got back, which would add to his already pretty big workload (turns out training in the medical facility requires a _lot_ of paperwork) and that was something he didn’t ever want. Fate/destiny/whatever liked to kick him in the ass and make his life hard like that. 

He was broken out of his thoughts of the impending doom of paperwork by a strong grasp on his wrist jerking sharply and dragging him down the corridor, accompanied by the loud rattling of gunfire. Green hair was getting in his eyes, and for once he really wished the Initiative was stricter about hair length.

Morgan dragged him down the corridor, ignoring his own attempts to get his feet under him and also persuade her to let go of his wrist because there was a genuine risk of her dislocating it at this rate and that could _really_ be an issue if it healed before it went back in considering he didn’t think anyone knew how to relocate a dislocated joint that had healed out of position.

She dragged him up a couple flights of stairs, during which he finally managed to get his feet on the ground to start running properly. He was beginning to lose hope in the idea of her stopping and instead began to focus on an escape route from the turrets he could hear powering on along the corridor. The windows looked good, he could survive a drop like that fine and if he managed to make sure Morgan fell in the right position she would be fine too.

“Morgan!” Hama’s voice came from several floors down, considerably closer than she should have been at the entrance. She’d most likely abandoned her post to come help them which, while appreciated (plans were reforming in the back of Chaser’s mind the second he heard her shout), would probably not do much good.

“Hama!” Morgan screamed out in return, a sound that felt like it blew out one of Chaser’s eardrums from the feedback on the earpiece alone.

Well whatever. Morgan was most likely listening now, and here was his best opportunity to get her to follow an escape route. “Best escape route is probably the window at the end of the hall.” Here’s hoping she heard.

“First floor terrace!” Location. Just below them. If Hama caught Morgan, then Chaser wouldn’t have to worry about making her land correctly, leaving him more opportunity to make sure he landed right and therefore minimised injury, not to mention the fact that it could salvage his earlier plans for the mission. 

He pulled his earpiece mic closer to his mouth with his free hand and gave the order “Catch Morgan! I’ll be fine!”

Hama’s questions didn’t make it to his earpiece before Morgan hurled herself headfirst through the window (terrible strategy, you’re supposed to go feet first to avoid a concussion, regardless of the bullshit some of the older Greys pulled), dragging Chaser behind her.

Here we go.

Hama was running to catch Morgan, who was falling considerably faster than Chaser, but there was no way she’d make it in time _unless_ she jumped forward for it which at least it looked like she was preparing to do. Good. Chaser shouldn’t have to worry about either of them in that case.

Fifteen metres till impact.

Ten metres till impact. (In his peripheral vision he saw Hama catch Morgan bridal-style and roll out the momentum perfectly. Good, that was that taken care of)

Five metres till impact.

Three.

Two.

One. 

Chaser hit the ground with a crack and the distinctive sound of an ankle breaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have I ever told you guys how great it is to be able to reuse dialogue from my other works 
> 
> Cut it off early because that was a great place to finish a chapter on, uploading another chapter to make up for it give me ten minutes  
Update next chapter's up, enjoy


	5. Chapter 5

Chaser didn’t really remember much after that (turns out stopping suddenly when falling at high speeds is not particularly good for your brain) except for the feeling of his arms looped over another’s shoulders, a throbbing pain in his ankle and at one point a distinctly loud yell that made him flinch away, aggravating his ankle further.  
He held on most of the way back, but not long before they reached the evac point he passed out and at the sound of the hovercar’s blades slowing down to land he (according to the pilot’s report) promptly collapsed properly. 

He woke up in the medical facility to an empty room, a splint on his ankle (he always healed too quick for them to justify a full cast) and his holopad on the desk next to him, a similar situation to the many times he’d woken up in medical before: Crow wasn’t and had never been the type to stick around till someone woke up and he didn’t have other friends. It didn’t matter if he’d been on a mission with them before: if they followed the pattern of previous missions with trainee Greys, the most Morgan and Hama would check on him would be to see if he was alive and stable (if he wasn’t that would make the mission less successful and that would decrease their standing with the higher-ups, which no one wanted) and then leave, never to see him again. Typical, but if one was a Solo (or pre-Solo, it would be another few months till his 20th birthday for them to make it official) it was expected. The Grey mindset always slipped in a little after the first mission. Maybe Janus, since xe was another Solo, would show up.

He turned and fumbled for the holopad on the table, eventually after a few tries picking it up and going straight to the mission report. It was pretty short, average, the goal being an overview of the assignment, the agents’ performance and their level of success rather than an in-depth analysis of every last thing they did. His injury, Hama leaving her post and the fact that he and Morgan were sighted brought their level down a bit but it was overall marked successful, which was pleasant. Nothing mentioned about Crow (no veiled threats about her safety and sense of self in the future), so she was fine for now.

He turned to browsing the small, Grey-exclusive chat-site used in HA7 as a substitute for social media. Crow was apparently doing her best to make cookies, there was a party happening in someone’s room and someone had got in major trouble for sneaking back some Sunshine from a raid. An average day, really.  
Morgan and Hama hadn’t updated their profiles, but the fact that both profiles were empty and marked dormant probably meant that they actually hadn’t noticed that they had them yet. Maybe he’d tell them if they came in.

Speaking of, he was jerked from his focus by the sound of the door sliding open and Morgan dragging Hama through. Most likely for the basic morality of having both of them there, rather than just one to check his status. Make them feel better about his injury and the probability that they didn’t really care about his wellbeing. He kept up the disinterested look and continued scrolling through the chatsite. “You’ll be glad to know the mission was a success.” 3, 2, 1, they’ll be gone right about...

“You good?” 

Chaser looked up, surprised. “What- yes. I’ll be fine in a bit. If they did one thing right when they made me a Grey it was with my healing ability.” He laughed slightly. They cared? Beyond the status report? That was... unusu- wait. They were new. They most likely didn’t know about the hierarchy and Solos yet. As Morgan’s (and by extension, Hama’s) guide for the current time, he was contractually obligated to tell her about the hierarchy and “how things work around here” as soon as possible. As someone who hadn’t had any close personal attachments besides a hollowed-out shell of a person who had been brainwashed into a complete 180 on her old self and belief system in two years, he was contractually obligated to not fuck this up. 

“Did you genuinely think it was a good idea to jump out a window to escape?” Morgan pulled up a seat and sat down. 

He did his best not to stumble on his response.“Not particularly, but you were going very fast and we couldn’t exactly turn around.”

Hama followed Morgan and sat in another chair, surprising Chaser even further. She, a Grey who had no real attachment to him besides through her partner, cared? “Was my headpiece working on your end?”

“I couldn’t hear your voice through it, but I assume you could hear ours.” 

“What was with the “catch Morgan I’ll be fine” thing? I could probably have handled it.”

Chaser gestured at his ankle, which was currently wrapped in bandages. “Look what happened to me. That could have been your neck.” He leaned back again and sighed before smiling tiredly at her. “All in all, the mission was a success. Not a perfect one, but good for your first real mission.”

Hama gave Morgan a high-five, before giving Chaser one too, which he would’ve missed if it wasn’t for his enhanced reflexes.

And thus began the awkward silence.

Hama spoke up first. “Is the... is this conversation over?”

“I think so. You two can go if you want.” The two began to climb out of their seats before Chaser quickly reconsidered and stopped them. “But before you go...”

Hama stopped getting out of her seat. “Yeah? What’s up?”

Chaser ran his fingers through his hair for a second, before sighing. “Look. It’s insanely obvious that you two have massive crushes on each other. Resolve it. Please. For everyone’s sake.” If they were going to stick around, they could at least try to resolve the tension driving everyone else in a ten metre radius as far away as possible.

“Oh. Um. Ok.” Morgan went scarlet, as did Hama. Chaser planned to make sure Crow sent them both on the cafe mission.

***

Janus showed up around half-an-hour after Crow, after the doctors had finally decided to put a decent bone-setting ability in him to avoid the whole “hope to god for a field medic to come at sonic speed to set your broken bones or we have re-break it when you get back to the holding area” choice he’d been stuck with for the past two years, and he was stuck on bedrest for a few days.

“Chaser!” He’d jumped at his name, jarring basically his entire muscular system uncomfortably. He must have wheezed or swore or something like that because immediately Janus started apologising once xe got close enough to see him properly. 

Crow proceeded to slap xim on the back in her “friendly” way, by which it is meant that she almost knocked xim headfirst into Chaser’s ribs.

Xe wheezed, all the air in xis lungs knocked right out, Chaser choked at the near-miss of a lot of pain, and Crow laughed saying “Chaser’s strong enough to take it! Stop worrying!”

Long story short, a mostly-regular Grey friendship. 

Crow shared a couple of the (only partially burnt and what wasn’t burnt was actually pretty decent) cookies she’d made with the group. It was pretty nice.

They tasted a bit like the ones she used to make back home.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> another two year timeskip also chaser loses an eye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please note: i have no idea how electricity inside the body works so bear with me

“Hey, Morgan, Hama, it’s official now: I’m a Solo.” Chaser strolled into Morgan and Hama’s room.

“A what?” Morgan looked up from her holopad.

“If someone goes three years without a partner, then they officially get assigned the role of Solo. It helps that I’m a stealth operative, technically.”

“Hold on, hold on,” Hama sat up from her bed, where she’d been taking a rather nice nap till Chaser walked in, and had been feigning sleep since. “We have _ roles _ now?”

Chaser turned towards her, still leaning on the doorframe. “It’s more a recommendation. Your shirt’s on backwards, by the way.”

Hama looked down. It was. She flipped it round as Morgan spoke up. “What are mine and Hama’s?”

“No one told you? You’re a recon operative,” he pointed at Morgan. “and you’re a combat type.” He pointed at Hama.

“Great, I’ve always been good at punching people.”

“Somehow, that is hard to believe when you are wearing a cartoon bunny shirt.”

***

Chaser _really_ needed to break this habit of falling out of windows. Last time he’d been pushed out by another Grey three floors up, the time before that he’d been thrown out by an absolute behemoth of a human four floors up, and this time he’d been shot out of a window ten floors up. Admittedly, he’d never heard of any Grey being shot out a window from anything resembling the height he had and not dying, but lying on the floor trying to breathe through broken ribs inching back to position with his hand clamped over a bullet wound in his face while his skin itched like a spider bite over the other healing wounds on his chest, he honestly couldn’t say it sounded any worse.

His communicator let out a loud burst of static, going (almost) silent for a few seconds before finally flickering to life. “Chaser? Chaser come in!”

He inhaled as best he could, before murmuring into the half-shattered communicator “Injured. Requesting medic.”

He heard Morgan let out a loud sigh of relief. “Thank god, there’ll be a medic over there in two minutes. Hold on till then, and don’t fall asleep, no matter what.”

He didn’t feel like responding, but he wheezed out a painful “Ok.” all the same.

***

“-twelve cracked vertebrae, seven broken ribs, three ruptured organs.”

“And a partridge in a pear tree.”

Crow sighed. “And a motherfucking missing eyeball, Chase.”

“It’ll grow back, right?” Greys couldn’t regrow organs nor major missing parts that weren’t organs (legs, hands, eyes etc), but there was a chance his healing abilities might work it out.

“We don’t know. Your healing capabilities are the most advanced of any Grey to date, but they’ve never had anyone else take a bullet through the eyeball and survive. Admittedly, all it took out was a bit of the frontal lobe and your eye, but still. It might heal, might not. If it doesn’t you have two choices: eyepatch or prosthetic. Well, not really a choice, they’re putting a prosthetic eye in you no matter what if it doesn’t heal.”

Chaser paused in fiddling with the current implemented solution, the eyepatch. “Since when have we had prosthetic eyes?”

“Since you lost yours and we didn’t know if it would heal. Useli and Ursa (you know them, right?) in Holding Area Two have been working overtime with the programming department over there to make one. Like it or not, and knowing you probably not, you’re considered to be a pretty good operative and the higher-ups won’t let you go or be damaged without a fight.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s good, right?”

“Yep. They’re bastards, but bastardry is acceptable if it’s for a good cause.”

***

“#0009R23GRE5SKC9?” The doctor had lilac hair, pale grey eyes, porcelain-pale skin and the look of someone who hadn’t slept in weeks. The classic Grey doctor look. Sourced from nights of paperwork, mountains of stress when their knowledge was put into practice and long months without natural light.

“That’s me.” Chaser raised his hand.

“Follow me.”

***

“Your eye won’t grow back. It appears we’ve found the limitations of your healing.”

Chaser was silent. Even if he’d been expecting this (a prosthetic wouldn’t have been commissioned if there was a good chance of the eye regrowing) it was still kind of a shock. He had the best healing abilities of any Grey to date, he could survive most lethal injuries without real medical assistance, but what did that mean for him (and by extension Crow) in the eyes of the higher-ups if he couldn’t regrow a simple eyeball? He breathed in deep, and let it out slowly, like Mags from the Oak had always taught him. “Ok. Any news on the prosthetic?” 

“Yes actually.” The lilac-haired doctor shuffled of few of their papers. “It’s completed, and should be able to be implanted in about two days. Surgery should take about two hours including calibration, under general anaesthetic, and then around a day’s worth of adjustment time taking Grey adaptations into account. Unfortunately, the vision between your existing eye and the prosthetic won’t work well together; they won’t sync up right and will cause nausea and dizziness, so you’ll only be able to use one at a time. The best solution anyone has been able to think of is a traditional eyepatch, so any suggestions you may have are appreciated. The surgery will go ahead in about three days.”

***

“Have you considered implanted shades?” Janus was sitting on xis bed, lazily flipping through a book xe had found in a residence on a Disappearance mission, while Chaser was on the other side of the room scrolling through the Holding Area 7 chatsite while slowly rotating on a swivel chair. “It’d be cool, like Kaylon in _Edge of Reality_!”

“Janus, they died after being punched out of the airlock halfway through the film.”

“Well they were cool while they lasted. And Tay got them too in the sequels.”

Chaser leaned his head on his free hand. “The sequels sucked.” 

“I will have you know Face of Cryolite was great!” Chaser hid a smile behind his hand and shrugged, then looked back down at his holopad. Soon there was the sound of paper on paper, and then the sound of scribbling.

“Hey, hey, _hey_,” Chaser looked up to see Janus holding a ball of crumpled paper. “Catch.” Xe threw the ball at him.

“Fuck you.” Chaser caught the ball and uncrumpled it. It was a relatively good drawing of him in profile, with his missing eye covered by a lens that appeared to connect to his face through a v-shaped bit of plastic on the side of his face. Admittedly, he did look really cool. He looked back at Janus, who was grinning like a maniac. “I’ll consider it.”

***

He had gone through with it. The shades had been implanted at the same time as his new eye, and now there was a little plastic v on each of his temples for the shades to slide out of when he needed them. Speaking of the shades, his biological eye was currently covered but he could literally _ feel _ the plastic shade still inside his head, which was not fun at all.

“My dude. You look badass as _fuck_.” 

“Thanks. I have no idea if you’re lying, I haven’t seen a mirror yet.”

“Trust me. You look so damn cool. The mechanics are exposed right now because they’re still working on a covering lense that fits your socket and still functions right, and you look like a cyborg from a twenty-first century film!”

“How dare you call me a twenty-first century cyborg. I am a twenty-seventh century cyborg at least.”

Janus laughed slightly. “Crow was helping out some of the others in your group and should be here in about ten minutes and Morgan and Hama should be back from that search mission in about an hour. There’s also like twenty get-well-soon cards in our room.” Xe grinned. “I guess you have more friends than you think, Chase.”

***

“Hey Chase I heard your prosthetic’s in- _holy shit you look cool_.” Crow burst in through the door, stopping short when she saw Chaser.

“I know, right!” Janus yelled. Chaser flinched slightly at the noise. (The anaesthetic actually worked this time, but it came at the cost of being a bit more sensitive to loud noises for a few hours.)

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Chaser turned back to Crow. “Watch this.” Chaser tapped his right temple, and the embedded shade over his existing eye retracted and his left embedded shade moved to cover his prosthetic. 

Crow genuinely put her hands to the side of their mouth as she gasped, before sliding them down to her shoulders the way she always did when she was excited. “Woah! Does it run on neuro-electricity or do you have to charge it or...?”

“Neuro-electricity. If I’m still going, it’s still working.”

“That’s so cool! I’ve always wanted to see a prosthetic run on neuro-electricity! How does it work, I’ve never been able to get someone to explain it to me and the articles on the holonet are always practically unreadable.”

Janus, who had been watching the conversation like a tennis match, suddenly interrupted. “Neuro-electricity, or just the prosthetic?”

Crow looked even more excited. “_Both!_ ”

And so Janus launched into a thorough explanation of neuro-electricity and neuro-electric prosthetics to a delighted Crow and fascinated Chaser.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so it turns out i probably have rsi can i get an f
> 
> i hope you all know that the "and a partridge in a pear tree" joke is the funniest thing ive ever said
> 
> if anyone can point me to some resources on emps it would be greatly appreciated


	7. Interlude: Prosthetic Orders/Repairs 1/1/3142

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't find any good resources on EMPs so take this to make up the slack
> 
> Also worldbuilding woooo

**Prosthetic Repairs**

Holding Area Negative Two:

Prosthetic hand, #8863  
Prosthetic fingers (index and middle), #5291  
Damages caused by large explosion in cell caused by captured Amytoxin soldier

\- Commander 3578, Holding Area Negative Two

\---

Holding Area Negative One:

None

Notes: Destroyed prosthetic mentioned in this month’s prosthetic orders is being sent to you. Fix if possible, reduce for scrap if not. 

\- Commander Jasper, Holding Area Negative One

\---

Holding Area Zero:

One left leg, destroyed by improper handling  
Move to stockpile when fixed

-Commander Citrine, Holding Area Zero

\---

Holding Area One:

None  
_Damaged prosthetic belonging to #4927 being sent for repairs. Agent killed in combat, send repaired prosthetic to stockpile. -Yuto Natin #6457_

-Commander Natin (#6457), Holding Area One

\---

Holding Area Two:

None

\- Commander Ina, Holding Area Two

\---

Holding Area Three:

Right ankle-bone prosthetic damaged at medial malleus  
Heavy impact received at damaged area  
Prosthetic belongs to #9593

-Commander Byasa, Holding Area Three

\---

Holding Area Four:

Forearm/hand prosthetic belonging to #4012 damaged in firefight with Terak military.

-Commander Swallowtail, (#7659)

\---

Holding Area Five:

I, II and III metacarpal bones  
Damage reportedly caused by punching a member of Neried military personnel in full tank armour  
Affected: #2391  
(Prosthetics were made of titanium alloy, reportedly snapped in half by a _single punch_. We will be keeping a close eye on #2391 in the future as well as running several tests.)

Commander Tirnu is unavailable to sign due to being absent due to illness  
-Kirsten Retwin, Head of HA5 Medical Facility

\---

Holding Area Six:

None

-Commander Sagittarius, #8462, Holding Area Six 

\---

Holding Area Seven:

None

-Commander Ypres, #3012, Holding Area Seven

\---

Holding Area Eight: 

None

Commander Trenit, #8415, Holding Area Eight

\---

Holding Area Nine:

Damaged hand and forearm belonging to #0284, snapped in half around midway through forearm during capture by Terak personnel.

Commander #4198, Holding Area Nine

\---

Holding Area Ten:

None

\- Commander Vifik, #8095, Holding Area Ten

\---

**Prosthetic Orders**

Holding Area Negative Two:

4 left arms  
3 right arms  
3 right hands  
1 left hand  
Affected agents are #0894, #1256, #2578, #5788, and #9378.  
Injuries caused by large explosion in cell caused by captured Amytoxin soldier  
Requested Specifications: None

\- Commander 3578, Holding Area Negative Two

\---

Holding Area Negative One:

1 left hand, measurements enclosed, for Agent #0458G15BR89SKM19.  
Previous prosthetic rendered inoperable by EMP.  
Requested Specifications:  
Neuro-electric

_Run this one on neuro-electricity if possible. Actually check the damage report for once if you need to know why. -#0063 _

\- Commander Jasper, Holding Area Negative One

\---

Holding Area Zero:

None

-Commander Citrine, Holding Area Zero

\---

Holding Area One:

Two sets of lungs  
Three single lungs  
One heart  
Two stomachs  
Measurements (etc)  
Damages received on mission, currently unknown exactly how, likely capture and experimentation.  
Affected agents: #1789, #4704, #6703, #7893, #8436, #9978  
Requested Specifications: None

Notes: Get this done quickly, the affected Greys are in the HA1 Medical and being kept alive with machines, but this is not an effective long term solution and we would like them back on their feet asap.  
Two are missing livers, and requests have been sent to Zero for liver cells. 

-Commander Natin (#6457), Holding Area One

\---

Holding Area Two:

None

Notes: Have received reports of prosthetic eyes being developed, several Greys here with missing eyes may benefit. Measurements will be sent with next report, if that’s ok.

\- Commander Ina, Holding Area Two

\---

Holding Area Three:

1 1m*10m roll of skin (undyed)

1 full set of fingers for the left hand  
Affected: #4542  
Report states that it was an accident when the Grey was 16, and during the operation the fingers were not regenerated for unknown reason. An investigation is pending.

-Commander Byasa, Holding Area Three

\---

Holding Area Four:

None, measurements pending for replacements of existing prosthetics.

-Commander Swallowtail, (#7659)

\---

Holding Area Five:

1 0.1m*0.2m skin patch (dyed C19)  
Damage received on a mission, reportedly hit by laser fire.  
Affected: #2584

Commander Tirnu is unavailable to sign due to being absent due to illness  
-Kirsten Retwin, Head of HA5 Medical Facility

\---

Holding Area Six:

None

-Commander Sagittarius, #8462, Holding Area Six 

\---

Holding Area Seven:

1 eyeball and lens  
Destroyed by gunshot  
Affected: #0009  
3 rolls of prosthetic skin (undyed), 1m*10m  
Potential upgrade on skin from HA7 Medical staff oncoming. Updates soon.

-Commander Ypres, #3012, Holding Area Seven

\---

Holding Area Eight: 

1l of 6754-H  
Affected Grey’s ulna broken in two places during combat with Terak soldiers, substance injected by soldier during combat appears to have prevented healing around the area. We need a fix while we figure out what the substance is and a counter to it.  
_Inform #3578 of potential trading between Amytoxin and Terak, they’ll take it from there - 8415_

Commander Trenit, #8415, Holding Area Eight

\---

Holding Area Nine:

None

Commander #4198, Holding Area Nine

\---

Holding Area Ten:

None

**Notes:** MIA Teams 108, 109, 110 have been recovered at 02:49 on 29/11/3142 by team of five Greys on mission.  
Fifteen Greys recovered from small bunker-like location, all missing various organs, limbs etc. Similar to Greys captured by Amytoxin, but too far from Amytoxin to be likely. Reports being sent to higher-ups and HA-2.  
All fifteen Greys being sent to your Area for re-measuring and prosthetics. Get your Medical Facility prepared.

\- Commander Vifik, #8095, Holding Area Ten

\---

_Prosthetic Orders/#0009 Measurements/(Prosthetic Measurements)_

#0009  
Prosthetic needed for left eyeball, destroyed by gunshot wound  
Dimensions: 25.3 mm (transverse) × 24.0 mm (sagittal,) × 22.8 mm (axial)  
Requested Specifications:  
Night vision  
Recording functionality (audio+visual)  
Thermal vision  
Tracking chip

Notes: #0009 is a potential participant of Project Judgement, handle this matter carefully.  
Give this project to #6102 and #5642.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos appreciated
> 
> Also plot-hole defense: prosthetics run on neuro-electricity have _much_ better surge protection than regular ones, considering that they are literally linked to the user's nervous system


	8. Interlude: Medical

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now for what was actually going to be the update!  
I'll likely add to this later, especially considering I'll be off school this week
> 
> More worldbuilding!

Grey medical training wasn’t exactly what one would believe it to be.

Greys were enhanced with stronger immune systems, basically rendering most (if not all) known diseases harmless. (Except for colds. Nothing can stop that bitch of a disease.) Grey healing abilities were able to heal a variety of injuries much faster than a regular human could as long as all obstructions to healing (eg unset broken bones, bullets) were dealt with. Mental health issues were an entirely different path of training. 

In short, one would think medical training would be almost entirely obsolete.

Not quite. Robots couldn’t be used to fix the handful of issues Greys would turn up with surprisingly frequently, as doing so required a knowledge of Grey biology that couldn’t be trusted to a robot’s hackable memory, and anyway, no robot could really handle human unpredictability (dumbassery). Chaser would never forget the time he was enlisted to help after a Grey, one in their _forties_ for Christ’s sake, was dragged in after purposefully jumping onto a cactus.

But all the same, treating the sick wasn’t the majority of what Greys training in the Medical Facility were really taught. Instead, the idea was to give the apprentices a thorough knowledge of Grey biology, and then get them to figure out how to improve it. That and completing the surgeries to create new Greys were the main jobs of the Holding Area medical staff.

Most Greys were unaware of this when they were first enlisted: all they heard was that medical staff were the least likely to die or be injured in the field of all the jobs in the Initiative, and that was enough for them. Chaser couldn’t really bring himself to blame them.

New Greys signed up regularly for medical training, and Chaser had gotten into the habit of telling every Grey who signed up exactly what they were in for. The ones who went pale and shook their heads when he asked again if they were sure were let off scot-free. The ones who paled but still nodded when he asked them again were allowed to join, and were the ones Chaser would prefer to train. The ones whose eyes went wide and a grin began to form when he told them of human experimentation, dissection and forced surgery were the ones to keep a close eye on when they were let in.

Chaser had let his career path (it was odd how such a mundane term could be used to describe his life in the Initiative) lead into being a field medic: first responder on injured Greys, potential for combat duty, requirement for efficiency of all costs. It was simple, sensible, and poor bedside manner was perfectly acceptable. Unfortunately, the Initiative had decided that when he wasn’t on mission duty, he was to be put on training duty, leading to the current situation.

“895, what the hell is this.”

Chaser was currently referring to Agent #0895, Mantis Glorion’s filled-out assignment on Grey resistance to anesthesia. Said apprentice had decided that the ideal way to deal with a Grey proving resistant was to terminate the Grey. “It’s a decent answer, if you’ll let me explain it!”

“Alright.” Chaser stopped and massaged his tear ducts for a moment. “Explain to me, in precise wording, _why the hell_ you think a Grey should be terminated for _anesthesia resistance_.”

Mantis stood up, looking the exact picture of a student who thinks they’ve finally got one up on their teacher but is probably about to be shot down. “When the Grey is terminated, we can examine its brain and blood as to why it was resistant!”

“Mantis, we went over the fact that the Initiative already tried that and _it didn’t work_ in the last folder of study material, if you’d actually bothered to read it.”

“Oh.”

“Damn right, 895, _oh_. The first, the _first_ thing I taught you was to _read the fucking material_. And now here you are, looking like an idiot.”

The student was almost visibly shrinking under his glare. Damn it, he’d been too harsh again, this is why he didn’t ask for this job... “Greys are terminated for becoming obsolete, betraying the Initiative or becoming too badly injured for the Initiative to fix. Alright?” He turned to the rest of the group. “All of you, note that down. Greys are terminated for becoming obsolete, betraying the Initiative or becoming too badly injured for the Initiative to fix! Don’t treat it lightly!”

He really wished he’d been assigned post-op check-ups like Morgan. Sure, you had to deal with newbies, but only once and they normally weren’t particularly talkative post-surgery.

***

“Stay _down_!” He hit the offending Grey in the chest, who wheezed out an apology. It was their fault, really. You don’t squirm while the medic does stitches. It was one of the first informal rules any Grey learned in the field: if the field medic has to patch you up, you accept what you’re given. And what this Grey was going to be given was more wounds after he’d stitched up this last one, because they wouldn’t. Quit. _Moving_. Sure it was a safe area right now, but still. Leg twitches were not an excuse.

A minute or two passed as Chaser discovered several more wounds along their upper back when he got them to turn over. (Not those kind of wounds, get your mind out of the gutter. Scratches healed too fast on Greys for anyone to notice.) He was still trying to figure out what to do (burns? on such a hard-to-reach location? not to mention the fact that they looked recent, but hadn’t healed) when the quiet was broken once more.

The Grey attempted to move up again, as they had several times before.“Are you-”

“_Stop._” He hit their back, more softly this time. Easily hard enough to bruise a human, but soft enough to be more of an insistent shove to a Grey. 

They sighed and leaned down again. “Tell me when you’re done.”

“I already told you, I will. Not quit moving. And tell me what the hell you did to your back. We haven’t encountered lasers or anything resembling flamethrowers on this mission-” They opened their mouth to speak with the kind of line between their eyes and slightly faster pulse that immediately meant an excuse, so Chaser cut them off. “And you haven’t been on another mission recently enough for it to be from that. Do you need me to send for a mental specialist when we get back?”

They paused, mouth clicking shut. There were no Greys in earshot, they were busy scouting the area for any soldiers. It was just him and the other Grey. “I-I... it’s not a... mental problem.”

Chaser raised an eyebrow that they couldn’t see, and quietly slid the shade over his prosthetic and uncovered his real eye. “What is it? And you can sit up now.”

They twisted upright, sitting with their legs straight out in front of them on the impromptu examination table (the floor with a blanket on it) with Chaser kneeling next to it. “I haven’t been healing right. The mission to Amytoxin. They captured me for a few hours before my team got me out.”

Amytoxin were notorious weapon dealers for the entirety of Terra: when the Initiative wasn’t buying their new stuff Amytoxin were trying to bargain or kidnap their way into possession of a few Greys for experimentation. “And they experimented on you while you were there.”

“Yeah. We didn’t put my capture in the report because Vien was on a string of failures and we were scared they would get terminated.”

“They wouldn’t terminate someone over fucking up a few times.” Their head whipped towards him in shock. _God_ Chaser hated the rumours the higher-ups would spread for their god damn rule-by-fear tactic. “The worst you’ll get is a few scans and if nothing’s wrong, sent back through basic training again.”

“Are you kidding me?!” The Grey hit the table they were on with their clenched fist. “I am gonna _kill_ Kata!”

“They were probably told the same things you were. They probably thought it would help you survive. And by the way, you’re coming with me to the Medical Facilty for some blood tests and scans when we get back.” The Grey’s shoulders sank and Chaser grinned. “Hope you’re not afraid of needles.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos appreciated
> 
> Get ready lads, in a few weeks I'll literally be throwing our favourite one-eyed Grey directly into hell


	9. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another big timeskip, and a reveal!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm late guys, some stuff came up yesterday that messed up my schedule
> 
> Also I procrastinated on finishing up the story that would make a major part of this chapter actually meaningful, hopefully I'll get that up in November

“Hama, any updates?” Chaser muttered into the communicator, speaking quietly in case any people were still in the residence. 

Six years had passed since Hama and Morgan’s capture and initiation (five since Chaser had lost his eye) and they had integrated successfully into the larger Grey Initiative. Morgan was on the medical staff, studying to be a surgical operative, and Hama was training to be a search-and capture operative. However, today they were both on this mission to capture two journalists and their kid, because the parents knew too much and the kid had good genes for a Grey and that was enough reasons to Disappear the whole family. Apparently.

Well, Chaser had nowhere near the authority nor lack of personal attachments necessary to get away with questioning his orders. Solos were the lowest on the hierarchy of experienced Greys, and even if the higher-ups thought him important enough to brainwash someone to make him stay and make a special prosthetic for him when he lost an eye, there would be consequences for whining. The kid they were going to Disappear had already gotten the pre-surgery shots, so there was no turning back.

“Nope, nothing unusual. Keep watch, we’ll breach in two.” Hama’s reply came crackling over the communicator in a haze of static. Had she broken her communicator again? She went through them like bandages. Maybe he should talk to an engineer about toughening the communicators. Ursa might listen. Useli would too, if he could get Karyan from Two onto the issue. Useli seemed to care about that kid a lot.

“Breach in half a minute. Any witnesses, sir?” Talon or Tally or whatever the fourth member of their little group (who was there on training, god Chaser hated training the new Greys they were always so scared or worse doing their best to look strong to hide it) was called asked over the communicator.

“None. Go ahead.” What followed after was dead silence, someone couldn’t exactly just Disappear mysteriously when the Greys doing it got in the house by breaking a window.

“Chaser. Get in here. Switch your camera mode on.” Hama sounded serious, and when Hama sounded serious things were about to or had already gone horribly wrong.

“Got it.” Chaser leapt off the roof, landing on the stone path silently as a cat before running through the open front door.

Hama was standing in the shadows just beyond where the dim light from the sky outside reached. “No one’s here. They got away before we could find them. From the looks and smell of it, they left around four hours ago. I need you to record the evidence.” 

Fuck. Not good for him, not good for Hama, not good for Talon or whatever, and very not good for Crow. “Ok.” Chaser tapped his left temple, retracting the embedded shade from over his prosthetic, switching on the recording mode as he did so, and surveyed the room. Nothing seemed out of place, aside from the fact that the shoe-holder-thing by the door was knocked over.

“Chaser.” Hama got his attention back to her. “Ok, so, we got here, the house was empty, and from the smell the inhabitants left around four hours ago. Mission failure Code Yellow, target escaped without sighting an operative. Survey all known exits from the city and any tolerated Yellows. End recording.”

Chaser stopped recording, but left his prosthetic eye open. “Sending it to the higher-ups.”

“Thanks.” Hama sighed and ran her fingers through her hair, leaving it scruffed-up and messy. “Fucking hell, this is bad.” She turned to the door. “Not Important, get in here.” 

The new recruit, who’d made the excellent decision of responding to Hama asking their name with “it’s not important” jumped down into the doorway. “Yes ma’am?”

“Get back to the van asap, tell the green-haired woman in the front who is not the driver that the mission was a failure Code Yellow and that we’re checking for anything left behind and will be there in a few minutes.”

“Yes ma’am!” The new Grey launched themself back up to the roof, and Chaser could hear the idiot’s claws (the official name was “finger-positioned climbing blades”, but they were claws no matter what the higher-ups said) on the wall as they climbed up.

Hama breathed out a loud sigh and ran her fingers through her hair. “Jesus Christ, the higher-ups are gonna kill us. But at least they didn’t get away with much anything major, according to Not Important. We just need to pick up a few discs and USBs and break a few PCs.” Hama opened her eyes. “I swear, if I ever meet these Firestep-Cloudlight people, I’ll kill them. Bastards.” She paused for a second, then continued. “Actually, I won’t. Probably good people in a bad situation.”

“The parents are both journalists. Pretty active in both reporting around the city and investigating Reds, the Silvers and the Initiative.”

“How the hell do you know that? The higher-ups would happily kill you for knowing that.”

“I have my sources.” Also known as Thalin who worked in surveillance and would do anything for eight credits and a hit of good-quality Lollipop. Chaser was pretty good at smuggling contraband at this point, and if Crow was in her right mind she’d have helped him.  
She wasn’t, of course, and hiding the syringe from a Grey good enough to be an Enforcer (and wasn’t that a thought? Crow, one of the best agents of the Tree, helping to guard the Silvers) was a very difficult task.

Hama continued rifling around the cabinet. “Anything on their kid? Canaan, I think it was?”

Something about her pitch and tone struck Chaser’s “higher-up interrogation instinct”. “Kaden Firestep-Cloudlight, ten years old. Decent grades, likes art and reading. Known friends include Tamara Tanzanite, daughter of Alexandrite Tanazanite, close friend of Kaden’s parents.” The response was robotic. Automatic. The voice that ensured Crow’s safety with its lack of inflection.

It didn’t escape his notice that Hama had flinched at the words.

“...Huh. You have to introduce me to whoever you get this from.” Hama brushed past him on the way out, squeezing his wrist as she went by.

***

Morgan burst through the door, knocking several piles of paper over and almost falling over in her haste. Even so, Chaser only looked at her with mild concern when he asked “Morgan? What’s wro-”

“Not another word.” Morgan cut him off. “You are a traitorous bastard, and a cowardly fool.”

Chaser laughed nervously. “What- what did I do?” Morgan wouldn’t use those insults if she knew about, say, his surveillance contacts, but he had nicked some of her stash of good coffee a few weeks back and well he wouldn’t blame her for murdering him because of that.

“We have known each other for _eight years_,” she pointed at him accusingly. “and you _never_ told me your surname was fucking _Catch_.”

“Oh.” The anxiety slipped off Chaser’s face and was immediately replaced with annoyance.

“Your name” Morgan wheezed. “is fucking _Chaser Catch_.”

“Yes, we get it, my name’s stupid. I hate it, people mock me for it, blah blah blah. Now unless you have anything important to tell me, kindly fuck off.”

“You can’t tell me to do shit, _Doctor Chaser Catch_.”

“Shut up.”

***

“Hey Janus.” Chaser was sitting on the small sofa he and Janus had bought with their mission credits, and Janus was on the other side of the room, sitting on kitchen counter, carefully injecting xis 15-75. Chaser didn’t want to bother xim, but snacks did always help any side effects blow over quickly.

“What.” Janus was never in a good mood at this time, and Chaser didn’t blame xim. 

“I’m going to the canteen, you want anything?”

Janus paused for a moment before quietly muttering. “Apple straws.”

“Cool. Any pack specification?”

“Minimum five.”

“One of those days, huh? Don’t worry about it.” Chaser bounced up off the sofa and left the room, feeling a little bad as the door slid shut behind him.

***

“Hey, Morgan?” Hama was lying on the bed, leaning on her elbows reading an article on her holopad.

“Yo?” Morgan spun her chair around to face her.

“You remember, at the Grey introduction thing about “obey or be punished”, blah blah blah, they said something about 15-75. What is it?”

Morgan sighed a painful sigh, before putting the holopad she was holding down. “15-75 is a drug invented years ago by the higher-ups back then, to help control Greys.”

“So it’s mind control drugs?”

“No. 15-75 is a drug with almost no effects, but is extremely addictive. One dose can get someone addicted for life. Withdrawal symptoms are near-lethal, so it’s impossible to stop cold turkey without people noticing, and it’s very difficult to go without the full dose. It’s basically impossible for a Grey made subservient with 15-75 to be able to leave, but if the Grey is captured it will basically be non-functional till rescued. Hence is why blackmail is more commonly used.”

“Oh.” Every time Hama heard about another terrible thing the Grey Initiative did to keep everything under control, she was still surprised by how low they would go. She wasn’t sure why she was anymore.

***

Crow woke up as she usually did, half-fallen off the bed, thankfully for once not accompanied by a night’s lover who would be pissed she’d stolen the covers. She rolled onto her back and disentangled herself from the sheets, almost knocking the lamp off her bedside table. Once she’d escaped from the clinging tentacles of _The Bed_ and had a shirt on she pulled the curtains open to reveal the ten by thirty centimetre window and let the leafy sunlight fill the room. She could see the tress of the forest surrounding Holding Area Seven from here, and right now it was just fading into spring. Summer was her favourite season, and she was excited for the coming months. Maybe she’d get permission to go outside for half-an-hour!

She emerged, hair freshly de-tangled and face washed and on the way to the fridge for breakfast and the coffee machine for a caffeine-based wake-up call.  
On the short walk Crow paused to rifle through her dropbox for anything new, and found her hand brushing against a slip of paper. She pulled it out and scanned the contents.

\------

AGENT ROBYN TANZANITE  
YOU HAVE BEEN FOUND TO HAVE THE DESIRED QUALITIES OF AN ENFORCER. COLLECT YOUR BELONGINGS AND REPORT TO MEETING ROOM 8 AT 2100 HOURS TONIGHT.  
END REPORT

\------

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos much appreciated!
> 
> Christ, Crow feels weird as hell to write
> 
> Chaser's surname was much funnier to me when that scene was written


	10. Interlude: Monika

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> screamin as i try to put in all the plot stuff that links this story to everything else

“It’s a scary case. Ideal Grey genes, but too young to enhance safely. Poor kid. We don’t have the facilities to raise her till she’s old enough, so god knows what they’ll do, they can halt aging, but they can’t fast-forward it.”

“Haven’t you heard? The surgery is going ahead anyway. With the machine as well.”

“The machine?” Chaser almost dropped his folder. “The machine, as in the untested memory-removing machine? The untested memory-removing machine that may _kill_ her?” 

Morgan nodded. “It’s crazy. I tried to stop them, but it’s going ahead anyway. If she survives, I’m making her my case. Don’t trust the bastards that did it.”

“You’re gonna make her your first personal case?”

“Yep.”

“Good on you. She deserves someone responsible.”

“I’m not doing it because I’m responsible. I can still care about others, that’s the difference.”

“Good point. Tell me how it goes.”

***

She was so young.

Thirteen years old, parents dead, home lost, and enhanced into a superweapon. She wasn’t even fifteen yet, the bare minimum for Grey enhancement. It was a miracle she was even alive. 

The child’s hair was shaved for the implantation of the machine, and she looked so fragile and small that Morgan had tucked the blanket up over her a little higher, and when no one was looking had snuck a little toy bear (ok yes it was stolen from a Disappeared’s house, but she didn’t know any Greys that were _ really_ above stealing and Crow didn’t count) next to her. Maybe the kid would appreciate the gesture, maybe she wouldn’t, but from the way she’d immediately curled her arm around it Morgan thought she just might.

***

“Who are you?” 

“My name is Doctor Morgan Amazonite, and I’m the doctor that’s been charged with taking care of you.”

The child cocked her head to the left slightly. “Taking care of me? What’s wrong?”

Morgan inhaled and exhaled. Here was the kicker. “Monika Pendleton, you are now a Grey.”

Surprisingly, Monika seemed to accept that pretty easily, with no more than a nod and a sincere “Ok.”

“You’re... okay with that?”

“Yeah. Can’t remember being anything else. What else would I be?”

“Oh, um.” The machine was a prototype, but still apparently extremely effective. “Yes. Seeing as you are too young to go on active missions, you will be in training till you are old enough to go.”

***

Monika was disturbingly adept at the training simulations they put her through, ripping through robots with the ferocity of a wild beast. It was scary, seeing a child tear apart steel like paper, but Morgan couldn’t deny that the higher-ups got exactly what they wanted: a leap forward in Grey evolution, the kind they lost when the Firestep-Cloudlights escaped before they could be Disappeared. It was half the reason the Pendletons were Disappeared: Jason Firestep-Cloudlight and Deimos Pendleton were brothers. 

***

Morgan was walking along a corridor, Monika in tow behind her when she noticed Monika suddenly stop, and then felt the full force of a Grey stare (colloquially known among as the murder-stare) on her back. She turned around slowly, just in time to catch Monika as she pounced in an attempt to rip out Morgan’s throat. Morgan quickly grabbed Monika’s outstretched hands in her own, but managed to resist the instinct to flip the body around to the floor to break its neck, instead using her legs to keep the rest of the small writhing body away from her. 

“Morgan!” 

Morgan heard Hama’s voice down the corridor (what a fucking miracle god in heaven she was glad to see someone to help) and almost let out a sigh of relief, instead screaming out “Now!” as she kicked the writhing child away towards Hama, who caught her in a chokehold. Morgan pulled out a syringe of dormine (mandatory for all Grey doctors taking care of Greys enhanced pre-15) and inserted the point into Monika’s torso. Monika still tried to struggle for a little while before gradually ceasing to move. Her eyes closed and both Morgan and Hama let out a sigh of relief.

“What the hell was that?”

***

“In short, we believe that the prototype machine has a side-effect of making pre-15 Greys’ fits more violent, though less common.” Immediately after Monika’s attack, Morgan had filed a detailed report on the event. Violent outburst, no noticed trigger, pre-15 Grey. Typical. But normally pre-15 Greys went for the face or torso, and tried to attack with their fists or feet. Some evidence of human brain function. But Monika? Straight for the throat. Teeth and claws. Feral.

“Is there any way to help her, or prevent violence towards other Greys short of termination?” Chaser spoke up. Morgan had dragged him along to the meeting as an expert on Grey biology, accompanying herself as Monika’s main doctor.

“Our current only idea is to ‘train the beast’, so to speak. Train it to not attack, choose flight instead of fight.” 

Morgan spoke up immediately. “She’s a _child_.”

“She’s a Grey. She isn’t allowed to be a child any longer.”

“Sir, with all due respect-” Chaser spoke for Morgan this time.

“#0009R23GRE5SKC9, what is your rank?” The superior turned to Chaser with the calm stare that promised Consequences.

Chaser froze like a deer in headlights. “S-Solo. Solo, sir.”

“And where does that rank you?”

“Lowest of experienced Greys, sir.”

“So do you have the authority to question orders?”

“No, sir.”

“Correct. You know what happens when you do something that necessitates punishment?”

“Y-yes. Yes sir.”

“Good. Speak to a superior like that again, and someone’ll make sure you’re moved to Holding Area Zero. My superiors already want you to take a stay there.”

Chaser visibly paled. “Y-yes sir. It won’t happen again.”

“And #0136G?”

Morgan jumped. “Yes sir?”

“Put the Pendleton child on therapy as soon as possible.”

***

The girl on the bed twitched slightly, and Morgan jumped.

Monika had been out for two days by now (she was just a child, what kind of person was she to let someone inflict this condition on a _child_) , and Morgan had spent every second of it by Monika’s bed. Hama had come in every so often with food and when it got late a blanket, and Chaser had appeared every so often to make reports in Morgan’s stead. Morgan had barely slept, no problem for a Grey in the field running on adrenaline, but a big one for a person watching over an unmoving patient 24/7. 

Monika stirred, and Morgan practically leapt up from the chair (ignoring the way her vision went fuzzy for a moment) to check on her. 

“Monika?! Monika!”

“Miss... Amazonite?”

Morgan could have wept with relief. “Monika! You’re awake!”

“What... happened?”

“We had to sedate you, but the dose was too big.”

“Can I... sleep for a bit?”

“Sure, sweetheart. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next week i throw chaser directly into hell
> 
> kudos and comments appreciated


	11. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chaser gets yeeted into basically hell

“Chaser!” Crow burst through the door, waving a piece of paper like a flag. “I got in!”

“What?!” Chaser almost knocked his pen mug off his desk. 

“Yep! I’m leaving for the Enforcer barracks tonight! I got accepted as a Silver Enforcer!”

“Course you did, you’re you!” Janus yelled, tackle-hugging Crow from across the room. Chaser soon followed, meeting Janus’ worried glance at him behind Crow’s back with his own.

“I’m actually going to protect the royal family!” Chaser heard Crow sigh to herself, and felt a sinking feeling in his gut. Crow’s brainwashing was even more through than he’d thought.

***

Crow had been gone for a little over two weeks now. That Avia girl she’d picked up at wherever was all mopey and sad, and the new handler was a lot stricter, but otherwise the days were same-old, same-old.

On the other hand, however, Chaser was getting anxious. When he went to hand in his reports, he kept getting... _odd_ looks from the people there, and when he’d told a group of some of the younger Greys to stop yelling in the library (maybe it was closer to “yelled at them to pipe the fuck down hadn’t they been in a fucking library before” but his point still stood) when he was trying to look up an old medical journal he’d heard one of them whisper to another “Don’t worry about him, I’ve heard he won’t be a problem much longer.” Two _ big _ fucking red flags in a facility where the higher-ups kept secrets like a miser with their credits. All the same, what could Chaser even do about it? He couldn’t run, they had Crow at their mercy and he just couldn’t leave her even if she left him, and he couldn’t ask anyone for help, they’d just call him paranoid. Hell, everyone he’d trusted enough to speak about his situation to had either laughed it off or agreed when he said there was nothing he could do, even Janus, who’d shrugged it off as best xe could with a nervous (and sad) laugh, even Morgan and Hama, who’d decided the best course of action was enjoy whatever time he had left as much as possible. (Speaking of those two, Monika had started calling both of them ‘Mom’, a fact that never failed to make Chaser smile no matter the situation.) 

He sighed. He was so fucked. He hadn’t forgotten the one higher-up’s comment a few months back. Knowing the Initiative, that wasn’t an empty threat. Morgan and Hama were out on a mission right now, too far away to help if anything happened, Janus was still in xis and Chaser’s shared quarters and Chaser had a meeting to report to that he couldn’t get out of.

He kicked the sliding door at that one secret place which never failed to make it open, and it slid open with a shudder and a wheezy sigh. Chaser stepped through, and immediately the door slid shut again and the sprinklers turned on.

Well, except it wasn’t water that came out. A pink-tinged sweet-smelling gas poured out of where water should have come from, making the lights rose-tinted and the room hazy. Chaser spun back to the door, not even bothering to try and open it the normal way (no, they were too smart to just leave the door unlocked and let him just stroll out like it was nothing) and began to desperately claw at the edges, but quickly he began to feel drowsy, too drowsy to keep hitting the door, too drowsy to stand up, too drowsy to...

.

.

.

Chaser woke up slowly and quietly, the first sensation he noticed upon waking up registering as the uncomfortable feeling of an IV in his wrist. He sighed, but didn’t bother removing it or opening his eyes. Now, first things first, he didn’t remember falling asleep here, so what was the best explanation for where the hell he was? He remembered a meeting, yeah, falling asleep in those was normal, but then... an empty room. Pink tranquilizer gas. Desperately trying to break a steel door with his fists. 

Oh god.

This was Holding Area Zero, home of the greatest monstrosities the Initiative could create.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know this chapter is a bit on the short side, sorry but im still polishing the next chapter
> 
> Comments and kudos appreciated!


	12. Interlude: Janus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> aaand how Janus is doing back at HA7

Chaser left for a meeting at 1300 hours.

It was currently 2300 hours.

Janus was curled up on the bed, watching the door and denying the fact that xe was waiting for it to open. They’d planned another movie night tonight, Janus had got popcorn and everything, just the two of them binge-watching the entirety of the Edge of Reality series from beginning to end. A peaceful night to take their minds off of what had been happening lately. And... xe’d been planning something more. Nice rings were difficult to procure in the Initiative, but xe’d managed to find two.

Janus sighed. Xe wasn’t an idiot. Chaser wasn’t coming back. Both he and Janus had known that the higher-ups had wanted Chaser to take a trip to Holding Area Zero for months at this point, and if the higher-ups were waiting to take what they wanted, it just meant that they wanted to take you by surprise. Chaser was going to be taken off eventually, and Janus would have to deal with that. Xe’d come to terms with it in theory, but now that it had happened, it hurt, and far worse than anything Janus had felt before. It wasn’t the sharp pain of broken glass or a stab wound, not even the burning pain of 15-75 withdrawal, but a deep, dark ache in his chest like his lungs being torn apart. In books xe’d taken (stolen, really, but who else would use them) from houses after the occupants had been Disappeared, when the love of people’s lives were stolen from them, they suffered from a thing called “heartache” from missing them so much. Janus had never believed in it, but Chaser had said that poor emotional well-being could cause physical symptoms like aches and pains. Janus hadn’t believed him, but now xe was reconsidering.

There was no point in continuing to think about it for now. Chaser wouldn’t want xim to stay awake thinking about things xe couldn’t change, and thinking of a plan while sleep-deprived never worked out well.

***

Janus woke up to the sound of a package dropping into the wall-box (well, it wasn’t really called a wall box, but it was a box in the wall where stuff like packages and notices fell into in the mornings, and what else do you really call that). Xe rubbed his eyes and reached out for Chaser’s arm to find nothing but empty air.

Xis eyes shot open and he turned over, only to find nothing where Chaser should be. Xe checked the bedside table (xe and Chaser had spent a quarter of their monthly credits when they were younger replacing the uniform one with an actual decent one, and then it had come out a few years later that Chaser had contributed most of his credits towards buying the really nice one that Janus had really liked) and there was no note, only the half-full bottle of water that somehow always stayed there. Where the hell was-

Chaser.

Chaser was gone.

Janus sighed and rolled out of bed, dragging ximself to the main room for a caffeine boost. There, xe would start planning. 

Xe reached into the wall-box on the way past on muscle memory, pulled out the pale grey package without bothering to check what it was and threw it onto the table, continuing on xis way to the kitchen. Wait. Xe turned back around, and fully registered the package this time. The bi-weekly package of 15-75. Today, of all days. They, the the higher-ups, xis superiors, had the gall, the fucking gall, to give him the 15-75, the manacles that they’d dragged xim kicking and screaming into the Initiative with, _today_. Xis partner (boyfriend? almost hopefully about to be fiancé?) was gone, taken by these people and Janus had no way of getting xim back, and they had the balls to remind him of the fact that he had no weapons against them right this fucking minute?!

Janus hurled the drug across the room and heard it smash against the bathroom tiles. Fuck it. Xe would ride out the withdrawal, and run. Get away, and join whatever resistance against the Initiative there was. For Chaser, and for whatever was left of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright this chapter is mostly here to service Janus' stories later
> 
> Comments and kudos appreciated!


	13. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> REALLY gettin into the non-con body modification this time lads

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof

Ok. Unfamiliar, most likely dangerous situation. First thing was to listen to his surroundings. Figure out if there was anyone nearby. Chaser concentrated for a few seconds before stopping. One heartbeat, a human’s, as well as the edges of a conversation. 

“That’s the Solo everyone’s so focussed on?” No heartbeat from the source. A computer, a web call perhaps? Most likely the hum from the electronics was drowned out by the sound of the call or the lights.

“Hold your tongue. That Solo survived a ten storey drop with twenty-eight bullet wounds with only one permanent injury. Remarkable healing abilities, medical training, above average Grey abilities for his time, keeping up with today’s. A beautiful anomaly.” The human. They must have some excellent capabilities, most likely in combat or surgery, if the Initiative would hold them captive without performing the surgery. But anyone who called anything “a beautiful anomaly” with that kind of tone was not someone Chaser wanted to be around any more than he had to, though he doubted he would have a choice in the matter. 

“Yeah, yeah, beautiful anomaly, surgery is like art with flesh, yadda yadda yadda.” The computer-person either had the balls to back-talk a superior, or they were the human’s equal, which meant they were most likely some kind of surgeon as well. Hm.

The human let out an irritated sigh-ish noise. “You will respect my art, or so help me you’re next on the table.”

“Again.” Again?

“Silence, Miranda, you know the plan. He’s awake. We need him be afraid or it won’t work correctly.”

Chaser gulped. Fuck.

“Aight, whatever. Multi-limb enhancement, mood-adjustment, no M-28, sensory adjustment, keep in isolation for-”

“Good enough.” Wait what- “Beginning in three, two, one...” The gas flooded out of the sprinklers again.

***

Dr Alto Threnody had been working for the Initiative since he first “gotten out” of medical school. He’d been picked up after his many attempts to enhance the other students (with their “full permission” of course) had finally resulted in a fatality and he’d been kicked out and arrested. He’d been knocked out in transit, and came to locked in a room with medical equipment with a human (no, there was no way whatever it was was really human) body chained onto an operating table and was told “improve this”. He’d sliced the torso open, then the arms, then the neck, then the legs and so on, then moved some stuff, readjusted some muscles, replaced some bones, along with some other things. Apparently he did well. They gave him more bodies, more equipment, more people. Thirty-eight years of the bodies, and his art was still not even close to perfect. But this, this was a playground he could really get used to.

The Grey, (for that is what these people were, these beautifully enhanced people with muscles of nano-steel cords and bones of titanium and senses beyond what most could comprehend, beautiful, beautiful to Dr Threnody) was registered as “#0009R23GRE5SKC9” on the tattoo on his right shoulder blade. Bright bloody-red hair, one lime-green eye (the other socket normally filled with a metal-and-plastic prosthetic with the workings hidden under an opaque black lens), and pale skin with many, many scars. He was an average height for a Grey (tall for a normal human). The Grey’s notes had recorded him as having unusually powerful regenerative capabilities, so powerful that apparently the only thing his body hadn’t been able to fix was the missing eye, the prosthetic for which had been carefully removed for the operation. (Better than the last time a Grey with a prosthetic had been sent in: the prosthetic had been ripped off, ruining half the wires and causing a large amount of damage. Dr Threnody had made sure the grunt who had caused the mess was next on the table.) This Grey was an ex-Blank, captured alongside another Blank who had since gone on to be an Enforcer after a few weeks in Area Negative One and was used as blackmail material to keep the red-haired Grey from running out. 

All in all, a fascinating and unique story, and leaving him with lots of room to practice. The body would regenerate anything he did wrong unless he replaced it quickly enough, the Blank physique would add a few layers of existing within-human-limits agility and strength, and the Enforcer he cared for would stop him from trying to leave once all was said and done.

Perfect. 

The manacles were on, the patient was unconscious, and the operating room was ready to go.

Threnody grinned and picked up a scalpel.

***

Synthetic skin had a strange texture. It was tough, leathery, but still smooth with tiny, raised bumps like normal skin. That and the dark-grey finish marked anyone who had it as strange and inhuman. Part of the Grey Initiative, inside and out.

***

The material for synthetic organs was even stranger: thin and rubbery, smooth and slippery, and dyed a deep blue to be more easily distinguished from biological organs. It parted easily under the sharpness of his blade, but he didn’t doubt that for all its flexibility, under anything less sharp it wouldn’t split for the world.

***

Grey bones were an alloy he’d never learned the name of with a matte finish. Difficult to break, unless hit at the right angle, like a diamond. Fragile, but strong. A strange combination.

***

Teeth were a common thing to replace in any Grey surgery. Human teeth were just bone, and wore down after years of wear-and-tear. Grey teeth were sharper, stronger, and more difficult for plaque to break down. Resistant to chemical breakdown, resistant to most forms of acid, and embedded firmly enough that to tug out a tooth, anyone who didn’t know what they were doing would find it easier to just tug off the entire jaw. Sharp enough to slice through most things easily. Useful as tools as well as to eat.

*** 

When he tugged the Grey’s eyelid open, he noticed a few things: a slight scar on the surface, and that the eye was backlit and possessed the bright, almost cartoonish colour typical of backlit eyes. Almost a shame that the Commander wanted it in a jar and sent to her office: Threnody would have kept it as a desk ornament. Ah well. The surgery for the eye wouldn’t be for a while yet.

***

Only twenty-three hours had passed when the voice of his superior crackled out for him to stop. Twenty-three hours of replacing skin, bone, and teeth, and fitting a synthetic heart around an already-enhanced body. Threnody wasn’t even close to finished, but still he stepped away from the still, grey-coated body.

A figure walked in, a plain-faced man in a suit over a Grey’s field uniform with a pair of black sunglasses on his face. He surveyed the unmoving body of the Grey, nodded, turned to Threnody and said “Good work. Get him on a gurney and leave him outside.” before leaving. Threnody shrugged, and motioned for Miranda to drag a gurney in.

The door slid open and Miranda walked through, plain white uniform as spotless as ever, pushing a specially-adapted gurney in front of her. She stopped next to the table and turned to Threnody, eyebrow raised. “So, you want me to leave it next to the table?”

Threnody nodded. “I also want you to give me a hand with getting the body onto the gurney. You can survive a Grey punch, unlike me.” 

Miranda shrugged, nodded and began undoing the manacles at her end of the table. Threnody did the same, and when the Grey was released Threnody seized his wrists and Miranda his ankles, and together they dragged the unconscious body onto the gurney which Miranda then carted off.

***

“009, wake up.” Chaser bolted awake, hands already attempting to reach up to attack the owner of the voice, but his wrists and ankles were still trapped in those goddamned manacles. He settled for looking around and snarling in the way only a Grey could, a way that didn’t seem to intimidate the strange man in the sunglasses looming over him.

Chaser stopped, paused, and then growled a simple, straight-to-the-point question. “What the fuck do you want?”

“Functioning well I see. How are you feeling?” 

One of the doctors then. “I’ll rip you in half the moment the restraints are off.”

“Angry, then.”

Chaser spat at him. It landed on the doctor’s plain black suit and he wiped it off before commenting in a tone that one would normally use to talk about the weather: “I would tone down the aggression if I were you. We could do whatever we want to your friend Crow and she’d thank us.”

Chaser went dead-still, dead-silent at that. 

The doctor smiled. “We’ll be sending you on a mission in an hour. Get used to everything now.” 

***

Something was wrong. Aside from the grey skin (that was a hell of a thing to realise) and the nervous energy making his leg bounce, there was a strange, foreign anger worming its way into his chest, like a parasite crawling into a human’s gut. Something many-fingered and many-eyed, crawling and burrowing and twisting. It wanted him to hurt someone. Soon.

***

“Anger levels?”

“Steady, ma’am. Very high, muttering to himself.”

“Good. Keep an eye through his camera, spike endorphins when he kills a Blank.”

“Yes ma’am.”

***

He could smell something on the air. Bright and salty and sour, it smelled like nothing he’d sensed before but he knew it, the thing in his chest said kill it kill it dead and you will understand they won’t hurt crow they won’t hurt anyone if you hurt the smell until it stops

***

He burst through the door and someone screamed, a loud and wailing sound that burrowed into his ears like something out of a horror movie that he’d watched with _there_ found the smell the feeling was screaming kill it kill it and you will be free

***

“Tanazanite, report.”

“He- its-Excellent results ma’am, the project eliminated all targets quickly and efficiently: it wiped out everyone in the building within half an hour, at which point the sedatives were activated and he was removed from the premises. Cleanup got the bodies.”

“Perfect. Test him again as soon as he is awake. Perhaps try dropping him into the situation while still unconscious.”

***

Chaser woke up falling. 

Everything hurt, though a little less than before. The feeling was there, but it was quiet for now. He couldn’t smell blood, but his hands still ached and his mouth tasted metallic. How long had he been out? It felt like... an hour? Maybe? Perhaps-

He almost hit a bird.

Where did it- wait.

The falling part.

The building he appeared to be falling onto (or perhaps into: the window he was going to land on didn’t look too strong) was an unremarkable grey building in the old industrial district, most likely the North side. When he looked up, he could almost see the shine of sunlight reflected off of the roofs of the Red District. It was, really, quite beautiful: a clear July afternoon fading into evening. It was no Liar’s Valley sunrise but it was still a sight and a half.

Wait, fuck, distracted again, back to landing and hopefully keeping his bones intact. Chaser braced for impact.

***

Chaser landed suspiciously lightly in a shower of tinted blue glass. There was no thump, no acknowledgement he’d fallen well past a limit that would have killed even the toughest Grey, just a shower of glass and unmarked grey skin.

Something about his vision sharpened. He straightened up and sniffed the air. Sour-salty-sweet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update! This story will go on hiatus while i clean up some of the later chapters and figure out where the story's going. This WILL update again, don't worry!
> 
> Kudos would also help me work faster because WOW lads it's kind of hard to maintain motivation when I see over a hundred hits and one kudos (that was me checking that yes the kudos button works) so yes i am mildly holding this fic hostage 
> 
> Have a great day!

**Author's Note:**

> Will be updated weekly (Saturdays) till I have to write new chapters in which case who knows buddy but we have at least eight before that point
> 
> Kudos and comments appreciated


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